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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790685">Letters to [REDACTED]</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryselis/pseuds/Chryselis'>Chryselis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Check chapter notes for individual letter tags, Epistolary, Hubert is at times sexually frustrated, Hubert represses feelings, Introspection, M/M, POV Hubert von Vestra, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Shorts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:21:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,866</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryselis/pseuds/Chryselis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of mostly unsent letters Hubert penned throughout the years to a certain member of the Adrestian nobility.<br/>In them he vents everything from anger and sexual frustration to feelings that eventually turn to yearning, love, and earnest desire.</p>
<p>[PLEASE check beginning of chapter notes for individual letter cw/tags! Variation of SFW, NSFW, pre/post-timeskip, as well as pre/post confession content included.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>97</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>221</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ch1 content warning: pre-TS, NSFW, sexual frustration vented aggressively, fantasizing, graphic mentions of gagging and genitals.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the esteemed heir of the Aegir dukedom, whose name shall not be repeated lest it wear out before put to any sort of constructive use,</p><p>Insufferable moron that you are, I find myself writing to spare Lady Edelgard the frustration of hearing talk of you more often than is strictly necessary. But why, Hubert? You would ask in that childish naïve tone of yours, and I would relish in telling you that the paper these words are written on will burn to ashes before you get to set your doe eyed gaze on them, for enduring an exchange with you willfully to express my ennui would have consequences no amount of well or ill meaning patience could withstand.</p><p>And so, you eager cockroach, I would have you know that I despise the virginal enthusiasm which exudes from every aspect of your countenance. And no doubt a virgin you are, for maybe a good fucking would already have removed that self-satisfied stick out of your perk tiny arse. Or would you be the one fucking yourself, determined as always to perform some manner of value to validate a meaningless existence fashioned around an archaic, inane idea of bred nobility? And bred you would be! Gagged too if your partner had any sense, perhaps with another fat cock stuffed between your lips or a woman's wet pussy dripping over your face.</p><p>Yes, I do believe then that the Aegir name would finally find a sense of purpose, and perhaps the rest of us would enjoy some damned peace and quiet for the first time since we started at the academy.</p><p>Yours for as long as I am forced to bear your existence in my vicinity,<br/>
A long suffering, bored, and perhaps under-stimulated Hubert von Vestra.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ch2 content warning: pre-TS, NSFW, graphic mention of fictional bestiality, sexual frustration vented aggressively, fantasizing, fisting, oral.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the usual recipient of these letters, and likely cause of the early onset of my impending insanity,</p><p>After some careful consideration it would seem that you are, as earlier suspected, the most virginal of virgins. As well as laughably susceptible to minute amounts of alcohol. And kisses on the cheek from miss Arnault, while your eyes dart nervously around the room in search of... Something even I could not identify from the alcove I'd carefully retreated to. To think that no one has yet to see you tremble and hesitate, to hear the sounds you would make from the slightest stimulation, from the most derisive of kisses to your lips. For someone so idiotically open and generous, tonight's behaviour felt incongruous.</p><p>Perhaps, had I followed you to your door, I would've heard the sounds of a depraved slut fisting themselves to thoughts of being used and stuffed. Maybe even with a horse cock, is that what you spend such goddess forsaken long hours in the stables for when the beasts are already plenty tended to? Are you a virgin only to human touch, already ruined by depraved bestiality when chasing attention from your peers only served to remind you that your birth right failed to correlate to esteem and affection? Would you suckle on a hardened rod of equine meat that could never hope to fit past those thin, sweet lips, yet would drink up all the seed discharged over your face and chest? Or does it seep out of your gaping, battered hole to soak through soiled underclothes while you fidget and squirm through a day of lessons?</p><p>I suppose any kind of deviant slutty behaviour is probably too much to hope for from you. At your core, you remain so disenchanting and pedestrian that the only feature of note is perhaps the freckles that spread from one ear to the other, that would highlight glistening come in a slightly-less-than-common, erotic manner.</p><p>Yours for as long as this paper withstands the burning flames or the disgusting burning in my gut,<br/>
A wholly unsuited to student life, intellectually apathetic, Hubert von Vestra.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come find me on Twitter @chryseliss</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ch3 content warning: NSFW fantasies, post-TS, post A+ support, mid war, pre-actual confession, Ferdinand gets injured, Hubert has feelings about it, but he's not ready to tell Ferdinand just yet, Hubert maybe thinks about Ferdinand's plush tits, allusions to breast and piss-play.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My dearest Ferdinand,</p>
<p>Yes, you read that correctly. An unintended brush with death during the battle today has left me immeasurably out of sorts, yet wholly unequipped to see that this out of place reaction find release. It shall join the stack of wretched letters, for fear- nay, in vain hope that they someday act as a placeholder for the man I have never mustered the strength to be, and who will never return the fierce bravery you display toward me over a cup of tea.</p>
<p>Let it be hollered across the land, the last sacrament of a goddess we swore to slay, that Hubert von Vestra is a pathetic, weeping, and gnarled coward. That not even tears in the eyes of a dying man, the only man to have through sheer determination patched up a cracked, dry, pus seeping fissure in what was left of my often ignored humanity, were able to smooth the passage of these infuriatingly irrational machinations from thought to spoken word.</p>
<p>You will be fine, of course. You must recover. Linhardt shall see to that or I will personally tear off his limbs one by one and feed them to him in punishment for what he made me suffer.</p>
<p>But the fear of your passing is only tangential to my real reason for writing to this imaginary version of you that over the years could perhaps have grown to love me as more than a colleague or comrade in arms. As more than a conversational partner during our regular flights of fancy, where I watch you suspend all that noisy doubt and guilt to forget it when the aroma of your favourite brew fills your senses, or is disturbed by the superior wafting flavour of my cup of coffee.</p>
<p>This is what I longed to tell you today as I watched your consciousness slip, failed to keep your mind alight the way you do mine when the prison of my soul threatens to break. Stay with me, Ferdinand, and you will live to see Edelgard usher in a new dawn when the shackles of expectation that to this day still weigh heavy on your shoulders rust away and shatter to dust. A day where I will struggle for once, freed of my own duty and purpose, longing to find it in you and your needs no one ever cared to fulfill.</p>
<p>Allow us this thought, and to do so you must live and fill my mind once more with the ringing tone of your abhorrently sweet laughter. If- when you do, you will find me at the feet of your cot, battered and brooding, silent but for the words I dedicated you here in secret.</p>
<p>When I think of losing you, my dearest, I see clear as day a future not of a unified Fodlan under Edelgard's majestic governance but a cup of tea lifted to pink, well-fed lips, that hesitate and open wide for the sweetest of interruptions, a honey glazed biscuit, or a sponge cake dripping with orange syrup - it would well suit the taste of your preferred southern blend. I have thought of you bred before, in the most physical sense of it, but my truest wish is to serve and spoil you with treats, be they baked or in the form of my jaw slack for your resting cock between my lips. I would see to it, Ferdinand, that not a single worry or fear crosses that pretty little brow of yours, at least not outside of whatever occupational challenge you will undoubtedly dedicate yourself to. I will be there after hours, listening to you extol the achievements of your day, brushing your hair and undressing you, begging you to reward me by letting me suckle on your now fattened, heavy tits. Oh, to have you reprimand me for once for being too eager, what an alien consideration - yet one that if you should let me, I would give you plenty of opportunity to fulfill. There would surely come a time where my enthusiasm overcomes me, having forgotten to tend to my own body, so occupied with your care, that I would let myself go in the indulgence of your rotund, soft, and powerful chest only to release myself like a child, pissing my own pants and likely coming from it.</p>
<p>And nothing would be wrong with it, for we would both be limitless and free, a couple of lazy deviants drinking in whatever fruit the other's desire came to bear.</p>
<p>Who is this man Ferdinand, that you have bewitched me into becoming? A fool perhaps even more so than you, for what is a fool in love with another fool but a man like any other. A nitwit who escapes in a dream of laying his head to your fattened bosom, happy and content.</p>
<p>Yours, should you ever find it in your heart to have me in all my perverted delusion,<br/>A smitten, distraught, lovesick Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come find me on Twitter @chryseliss</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ch 4 content warning: NSFW, pre-ts, Ferdinand comes to dinner with the professor with a very dirty shirt on, Hubert gets RATHER dramatic about it and Ferdinand's virginity, indulges in too much religious imagery.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the overgrown child next to whom I had the misfortune of being forced to eat dinner today,</p>
<p>You disgust me.</p>
<p>On as much of a physical as an intellectual, emotional, and ethical level. Your hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me, and yet, as low as humanity attempts to set the bar of common decency and sense, you somehow manage to lower it further every goddess forsaken day I am forced to endure in a time when you and I survive by breathing the same air.</p>
<p>Although one could argue today's behaviour to be entirely in character for a dunce who sees achievement as measurable in the most mundane, insignificant, and facile of actions. You are a self-centered child who couldn't even marvel at the sun rising the next day, for how could the sun do anything but rise when the magnificent Ferdinand von Aegir expects it?</p>
<p>Though I suppose to imply your egotism denies the existence of other minds but your own would be giving your lifelong obnoxious competition with Edelgard too little credit. Ah, what a thorn in your side the lady must be, reminding you of everything that you are not.</p>
<p>Edelgard, poised and composed young woman that she is, would certainly not arrive to dinner with the professor in the deplorable state you did today.</p>
<p>She would find time to make herself presentable. She would make time.</p>
<p>Even your father, despicable conniving fat runt that he is, would have words with you for the spectacle you displayed over dinner. But no, no it was 'Professor this!' and 'Professor that!'</p>
<p>'Look professor, I successfully put on a garment without the help of a valet today!'<br/>'Professor, did you hear that I managed to put one foot in front of the other without falling?'</p>
<p>That is how you sound to me, von Aegir. A helpless, pathetic child wanting for the gratification of any who would deign to give you the slightest morsel of attention. That you have not yet become a loose slut like the sad Gautier boy is an absolute mystery to me. It would be so simple for you, you wouldn't even have to think! Simply lay back and let whoever pleases use your holes as they wish, hell, you could even get paid for it.</p>
<p>But no, not even the satisfaction of a life of hedonism awaits you, because being the simpleton that you are, you have bought into the biggest, most obvious lie the noble men of our time would have you believe: that nobility exists, and that it is a code that will help you achieve anything other than feeding into the self-sustained monarchy of power and crests dictated by the zealots of the church.</p>
<p>Yet I digress, for these thoughts are far too advanced for the matter at hand.</p>
<p>Because for Ferdinand von Aegir, it is apparently blastedly, excruciatingly difficult to brush the dust and grit out of his hair and change his ripped uniform before coming to dinner. Is this not an academy for the finest of Fodlan?! Of all the farces you believe in, could propriety not be one of them?!</p>
<p>No, clearly not, for I was burdened with the sight of you today covered in grime, blood, and hastily shoving food into your greedy mouth while spraying crumbs everywhere in your enthusiasm to convince the professor to give you a single meager word of approval. How on earth did you manage to end the day looking half beaten and starved to death?!</p>
<p>Training, Ferdinand. Sparring. Working yourself to an early grave before you've even grown to a man's full height serves no purpose, not even your own make believe ones!</p>
<p>And then. Then, while stuffing your exhausted face, you dribbled gravy all down yourself.</p>
<p>'Oh professor, what must you think of me, I'm so sorry!'</p>
<p>And what about Hubert? Do you not care to know what Hubert thinks of you, Ferdinand dearest?</p>
<p>No, of course not, because your feeble heart would quiver in fear and shatter, to hear me tell you the thoughts that were likely fathomable through the disdain displayed on my face.</p>
<p>I would have told you to look at yourself, to realize what an embarrassment you are being. To pull yourself together, to excuse yourself and to not present yourself in such an unbefitting manner again. Are you not the noblest of nobles, Ferdinand? Do you not pride yourself on being perfect to a fault? The facade is slipping, quickly at that. As the months go by you're faltering, trembling.</p>
<p>I would have taken you out back, dragged you out of sight and to the baths. I would have stripped you of your soiled clothes and knocked some cold hard sense into you by turning a bucket of cold water over your head. I would have scrubbed, scrubbed your skin pristine and raw, then spent myself over you, the haloed virgin who wears dirt and blood like an unpleasant accident rather than the thirst for murder that they are. You see, it would no longer matter, for I would wash away your sins to reveal a blank, naked slate. I would teach you that mistakes are easy to hide, that desires are washed away with a quick climax and the unspoken truth of shame. You would no longer show yourself to the world so unabashed, you would ask me to baptise your virgin hole, to shed the innocence you have no right to claim.</p>
<p>I would fuck you so hard you begged for mercy and cover your body with bruises just shy of exhibition.</p>
<p>Let us see you then, not taking dutiful care of your appearance, not changing swiftly like most of us do with our backs turned and an adrenaline fuelled erection at the thought of having almost speared a comrade in training.</p>
<p>You disgust me, Ferdinand, almost as much as I disgust myself. That is why I would drag you down into the dirt of depravity to watch you fall from grace, only to scrub you clean while tears run down your snot covered, contorted, howling face.</p>
<p>Then, perhaps, you would no longer appear to me a child.</p>
<p>Let us see, when the future breaks, whether a single ounce of you is ready to stand as a man worthy of the denomination. The blood on your lance, uniform, hands, and face blood of purpose rather than naive buffoonery.</p>
<p>Until then.</p>
<p>Yours insofar as you occupy far more of my thoughts than your insignificance warrants,<br/>A blood drenched, friend of the dirt, stranger to innocence, Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come find me on Twitter @chryseliss</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ch5 content: SFW, post-TS, post-canon, Ferdinand and Hubert are married, Hubert is away for empire business and considers the meaning of absence and yearning in a letter to his husband.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My dearest husband, my Ferdinand,</p>
<p>Of all the things you have taught me, of all the immeasurable ways in which your inescapable presence occupies my mind at all times, there is one realization that strikes me now that we are apart for the first time in a long while:</p>
<p>You have taught me how to be without.</p>
<p>Not in the way a neglected child may learn to be without a parent's love that they have never known, nor in the way a broken heart mourns the loss of a future for which they yearned and fear they cannot live without. No, being without the richness of you cannot compare to any of the many ways in which men find themselves lacking in times of struggle, austerity, and strife.</p>
<p>Should you not recall our last words before parting, here they are repeated once more:<br/>    I fear, my love, that being without you will be an unbearably dreary state of being.</p>
<p>Now the work is done, I am dismayed to admit that it seems I was wrong. But my pride is not so childish as to withhold the luxury of learning. For as I have learned, being without you is far from painful business. On the contrary, it is a fullness, a knowledge that in our union we are whole. Not because we are less without each other, with time and distance between us, but because what we have helped the other to build themselves up to be during our time together stands invincible, unshakeable, a testament to the years of effort and care we have put into loving one another.</p>
<p>Without you, I am now still more than I ever was alone, ignorant of the magnitude of your love and being. Ignorant of who I could be, should I allow love to grow and bloom outside of concern for what giving myself to another would take away from being me.</p>
<p>There you have it, Prime Minister. Ink to paper, another confession to add to your stash of those embarrassingly vulnerable letters that distance from you without fail draws out of me.</p>
<p>Know that I miss you so, as I know with all my heart that you faithfully await my return, the memory of our warmed marital bed a greater comfort than either of our positions, reputations, or means could ever hope to offer.</p>
<p>I love you, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>Yours, with or without you standing here by my side,<br/>Hubert von Vestra-Aegir</p>
<p>P.S. I have arranged for one of your gifts to be sent ahead of my convoy. The intention should be clear, and if not please consider it up to your interpretation. After all, there is not a challenge you have yet to conquer, be it through insightful observation or sheer willpower. Stubborn stallion that you are.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come find me on Twitter @chryseliss</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>From here on you'll find letters based on prompt requests!</p><p>This one is special, because I received three very similar prompts mentioning Ferdinand on the battlefield. So I did my best to honor the spirit of all three.</p><p>Ch6: SFW, post-ts, pre-confession, Hubert witnesses Ferdinand drenched in blood after demonstrating amazing prowess in battle, experiences feelings and considers the truth of who Ferdinand is.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the blood stained warrior whose lance so mercilessly flayed the flesh of our enemies,</p><p>Death is a bringer of truth, and the figure you painted on the battlefield today revealed an iron red canvas, stronger and fiercer than any front I have seen you display over the years.</p><p>The image haunts me, forces my hand yet again to parchment and ink. Were I an artist, I would no doubt have found some way to commit the image to memory, and yet my own incompetence still tastes somehow sweet.</p><p>For as we know, gods and saints walk among men, clothed in a garb of sanctimonious morality, crafted from deeds that it would strive to conceal in the history it writes for itself.</p><p>The truth of this world is that it is built on blood spilled by the hand of those stronger than their enemies. There is no morality, there is no right and wrong in the face of a lance tearing clean through a squealing weakling’s throat.</p><p>And I would hide your truth much in the way that Seiros has sought to hide hers, but not for fear of revealing how ugly it is, not to trick and lie and paint a portrait of a world that serves only to control, rather than educate.</p><p>No, no I daresay that I am glad I cannot paint, that my lips are sealed and that the vision of you dripping, stained and soaked in the deaths you crave, remains mine to treasure and to dictate.</p><p>For in my short, sordid years, I have never seen a sight so godly. To watch you tilt your head toward the heavens, as they tore open and washed away the evidence of our undeniable might and supremacy. We had forged ahead, taken down a general with our battalions. And you stood taller than any man I have ever seen, quiet in a moment of roaring victory. Where others sank to their knees you stood unmoving, arms parted wide in welcome, a man crucified, smiling as rain washed streaks of darker red out of your already fiery hair and down the perfect marble angles of your face.</p><p>Had my breath not caught in my throat, to this warrior I would have said:</p><p>Death is a close friend of mine, that many hope to sidestep or begrudgingly accept as a compromise, a tax they would rather not have to pay. And your prowess in battle, the undefeatable might you carry on your shoulders, dispensed by the tip of a lance that treats skin, veins, and sinew like the butter you ration for your morning bread-- it is as close a friend to death as I am.</p><p>I am a fool.</p><p>For I know better than any other, that a friend of death is a man beyond reach. A man who knows that the secret to life is that you must grab its throat with bare hands, swallow down the fear that teaches you invisible limits, and claim it. Claim what is rightfully yours, claim the recognition you have craved, for any who should set sight on your form in battle will understand that the truth of a man who shines like the sun is that no living creature could survive the burning inferno that casts away all shadow at its feet.</p><p>For the sun gives life as much as it takes. A body celestial and broad, freckled with burnt spots as if its own skin carries the scars of an ambition too fierce.</p><p>How would that power feel, wrapped around my throat? How rich the scent of constant exertion, of guts and death, plastered to your skin?</p><p>And yet for its ferocity, for its blinding bright heat, the sun casts its light overhead in the sky, a quiet inevitability. Its breathing steady, its head held high, its existence an unfathomable glory to those doomed to writhe in darkness.</p><p>Keep their lips sealed, their mouth shut, their heart closed.</p><p>Cast away their desire, exile it under lock and key. For we know what happens when mere mortals court the sun.</p><p>They burn.</p><p>Yours, an ally in battle and victim of your kind arrogance,</p><p>A fellow soldier, murderer, and addict to pain,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, post-ts, pre-confession, unrequited love, Hubert fantasizes about worshipping Ferdinand’s body, if his own were more suited to giving Ferdinand the pleasure Hubert thinks he deserves.</p>
<p>Special thanks to Ally whose prompt enabled this very sad, very lonely, very horny Hubert.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the man I was born to watch walk the earth from afar,</p>
<p>There are times when I wonder if reality is as rigid as we are wont to believe. Terrible, empty moments of hopeless speculation when fate seems a cruel mistress, as real as the goddess whose head I would see roll at my emperor’s feet.</p>
<p>Do you know how cold it feels in the shadow, Ferdinand? For one so bold, so warm and vibrant in the present, rather than a ghost of times yet to pass, it seems somehow unlikely.</p>
<p>It is a necessity I thought to find myself at home in, that I know to be my only calling. And yet temptation to stray from one’s chosen path walks this earth in many shapes and sizes, sometimes growing tall and broad throughout the years, sometimes growing its hair longer, loud voice now sounding softer, a siren call to those cloaked in shadow who would seek to bask in it, claim it, own it.</p>
<p>But temptation itself is only human, no doubt holds desires of its own. And those will not be fulfilled in darkness, they can not be hidden from sight, no. They deserve to be held close, nurtured to blossom out in the open for all to appreciate and envy in their glory. Not wither away and die, not be forced to hibernate through winter for the promise of a spring that will never come, an impossible dark side of the sun.</p>
<p>And oh, how knowledge loves to hide in shadow. It is a cursed thing, a burden most men are not fit to carry. For lips to stay sealed, for hands to stay still when temptation flirts with its own fulfillment but a few feet away. That is why your hand met that of another today, why your laughter filled another’s heart while I kept my distance, but was unable to look away.</p>
<p>I know what you would need, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>I know better than anyone, better than the man who brought your hand so gingerly to his lips, made you blush and withdraw quickly, relaxing when you thought no one saw.</p>
<p>Much like the tide is swayed by the moon, you often bend to my hand, unaware of the pull guiding you to a fairer shore, ignorant of the push I cannot but help give you, no matter the cost to my heart.</p>
<p>Perhaps there is a time, a world, a reality where this knowledge doesn’t feel like punishment to my mind encased in a body unable to provide the pleasure you deserve, when its purpose isn’t long bound and shackled to a duty other than serving your love and cause.</p>
<p>In that far-off time and place, you would only be touched once your eyes were filled with tears for the need of it.</p>
<p>Your heart filled to the brim with words of praise, with all the truths so often kept from your reach by words engraved on a heart too young, not yet strong enough to dispel their treachery.</p>
<p>I would touch your lips and face with hands unscarred, kiss you with a mouth less foul, with lips less cracked and dry. Sensation would make my touch warm, set you ablaze in flutters of sweet, careful promise. Tracing the curves that have begun to fill out an old coat, fingertips pressing down into the muscle of thighs trained strong and taught. I would make you sing, Ferdinand, sing for mercy, for the fever of my touch to burn through your core and help you meet your maker once more.</p>
<p>I would have the strength to tear the traitor fabric off your heroic form, to release you from its constraint, glistening with sweat from the burning, unbearable wait. I would never let you forget how perfect you are, mark every inch with words before I enjoy your taste.</p>
<p>For loving you, pleasing you could never be a matter of taking.</p>
<p>No, a man like you should be served, worshiped for the carnal marvel that he is. To hold your tits in my hands, to suck and lick in time to your every shake—oh, what a privilege. To bury my head between your thighs, to help you to your release over and over, my mouth on your balls, tongue up your ass, wanton in my own appreciation for the overwhelming scent of you, the bitter, salty taste.</p>
<p>To ride your cock, to take it whole and deep and have it thrust home while my body is on display, my pleasure only ever an extension of yours, a byproduct of my worship.</p>
<p>That is what I would give you, Ferdinand, if pleasure were something a body like mine were suited to give.</p>
<p>But fate is a cruel mistress, and temptation the knowledge of pleasure not meant to be ours.</p>
<p>Yours, in a world where duty does not come at the cost of love,<br/>
A mangled, stained, stranger to your warmth,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: SFW, pre-TS, pre-confession, Ferdinand is upset at not getting picked as White Heron Cup representative, Hubert is perhaps a little murderous and conflictingly possessive, don’t make me say the word yandere.</p>
<p>Thanks to Schupuff for giving me this wonderful prompt and opportunity to write some conflicted Hubert, and for appreciating the slightly murderous turn of events &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the snivelling boy who once again falls victim to his own imagination,</p>
<p>These words I address to you on paper, for the fine art I have made of highlighting your many failures loses part of its attraction when the practice of it becomes a common sport.</p>
<p>There is no satisfaction to be gained from flogging a dead horse, who rather than stomp and snort only looks toward some distant horizon, or suddenly finds the composition of dirt under its hoof a new subject of fascinating study.</p>
<p>For the art is not to be found in the flogging, no. Such a punishment is all too obvious. What those who teased you today about your hopes to stand as house representative for the White Heron Cup fail to realize is as follows:</p>
<p>Psychological torment is best executed through method slow and deliberate. It is a seed planted with care, an idea crafted into poisonous blossom. It is the careful prying open of a shell, not with a chisel but with the promise of praise, like dangling a carrot to a donkey so that he plods ahead none the wiser, a puppet to your chosen pace.</p>
<p>What those simple idiots fail to realise about your hopes to be applauded as the best dancer of our cohort is that they aren’t only dandy, or that they can be used to liken you derisively to a sex they claim to be the fairer than your own—which in itself is hardly an efficient insult.</p>
<p>No, what they fail to realise is the loss of opportunity, the keen need you feel at all times for your name to grace but one person’s lips in admiration. What they fail to understand is that mockery is at all times about power, as is anything, and that anyone who wishes to break your spirit only has to take away any opportunity for attention.</p>
<p>It is not what you wanted that is to be mocked, but what you failed to achieve. It is not who you are that causes you the most pain, for you are a proud, good-intentioned sort, the kind who is aware enough to bolster the smallest deed as achievement, but will feel the sting of disappointment at its most sharp and keen.</p>
<p>I couldn't care less that the long list of things Ferdinand von Aegir would style himself to be somewhere along the line mentions dancing, grooming, cross stitching or embroidery.</p>
<p>What I care for is your marriage to potential, one not so distant to my own, but ever so misplaced in its naivety. The things you choose to care for, the things that make you bleed, I have studied them all, I know their pressure points and weaknesses, and I know the guilty titillation of wanting to see your face contort again, tomorrow, every time I interact with you and elicit a reaction that proves the power I hold over you.</p>
<p>To those who beat my precious prey to near death with their oafish, blunted taunts: I would show you the slow release of shame, cut you open inch by inch and lay out your guts for the world to see. Then perhaps you would understand the fine art of torment, the subtlety of torture, the delicious taste of blood spilled not by your own hand, but by the proxy of your own ingenuity.</p>
<p>Though I suppose it would be bitter, for you have left me with a strange predicament.</p>
<p>In order to resume my beloved practice, Ferdinand must smile again. He must look to the future with hope again, find another goal to set his mind to, burn bright with that naive spirit once more.</p>
<p>You see, those jokes about the butcher of Enbarr roaming the monastery are far from rumour. They’re a truth sublimed, a fact entirely concrete but mystified by those who seek to facilitate laughter when it leaves their lips, for fear that its meaning may very well be real:</p>
<p>I have no qualms killing those who stand in my way. For sport, if you will.</p>
<p>A different ballgame to teasing an already brokenhearted classmate, but a sport nonetheless.</p>
<p>And what is sport but competition?</p>
<p>Let us see how you fare, if you ever cross me again, if you ever damage a toy that I have vested interest in and I am forced to cut you out of my way.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I have some mending to do. Be thankful, Ferdinand, that in making yourself repulsive to me, you have captured the favour of my fascination.</p>
<p>Yours, insofar as morbid curiosity and my penchant for pain would have it,<br/>
An ever so slightly miffed, perhaps a little more bloodthirsty than warranted,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, pre-ts, pre-confession, Hubert witnesses Ferdinand banter with his battalion and struggle to deal with sexual innuendo, considers what lessons on power and intimacy Ferdinand has yet to learn, with a sprinkle of repression as usual.</p>
<p>Prompted by the wonderful <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/works">GoldenThreads</a>, who continues to be a personal source of inspiration to me.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the stupid little boy willfully ignorant of the language of lust and men,</p>
<p>What will it take for you to open your mind, instead of offering your heart up to any who would have it served on a platter?</p>
<p>Do you refuse to acknowledge one of the basic maxims of survival, which is that a man of might stands alone at the top of the pile of limp bodies, crushes others beneath his boot to guarantee that his ideals hold even an ounce of consequence?</p>
<p>In your attempts at kindness, your desperation for belonging, you prostrate yourself before a system that will chew you alive and spit you right back out, broken, used, and naked.</p>
<p>I may not be one for banter, but I learned early on enough to subvert it, best it with irony and spiteful barb. It is a reality of interaction as much as the tenets of good behaviour and propriety you hold dear:</p>
<p>Those who poke fun in good faith, even when well intentioned, seek to have you kneel at their feet. To have you relinquish material wealth, attention, feelings, whatever definition of power and control you are endowed enough to give.</p>
<p>The question then is for what motive, for what reason would the soldiers of your battalion mention the flush of exertion painting your cheeks, discuss through crass substitutions the size of their manhood, and ask that the little lordling be so kind as to help them settle whether girth trumps length?</p>
<p>Do you not realize what words mean, when they come out of your mouth sounding so puerile, so innocent? The opening you leave in your hesitation, the validation granted by your nervous laughter, by your refusal to reject anyone’s social advances outright for fear of pushing them away?</p>
<p>When you stated with a tremble, and I unfortunately quote:<br/>“Now men, let us not be vulgar. But if you must know... It is not the size that matters, but the skill in using it!”</p>
<p>The power you give your men, tantamount to submission, when you enable behaviour of this nature even in passing, in innuendo, related to matters of sex and intimacy?</p>
<p>How much of yourself you unknowingly give away, when you grant an older, stronger man a vision, a memory of your voice considering the use of his weeping, hardened penis?</p>
<p>How much longer must you stubbornly remain a child still crying, kicking and screaming for his father’s attention?</p>
<p>Or is that precisely what you want, Ferdinand? For an older, reeking hard cock to find place between your lips, so you can suckle away your loneliness, for once in your life feel useful while a figure to whom you grant authority calls you their pretty little bitch? </p>
<p>I would ask you in person, but I fear the answer would disgust me.</p>
<p>Not through its content, but more so by that wounded tremble, the quiver of your voice when you are afraid to say, do anything that may disappoint another.</p>
<p>Grow up, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>Have some self-respect.</p>
<p>Then maybe, when you first or next take a cock, you’ll be the one in control. You’ll understand then that pleasure is an exchange of power, that any unconscious submission is an abuse of your agency. Do you not claim to want to be the greatest soldier, the most beloved prime minister? When you fall to your knees, do you not want to be the one in control, the one to grant whatever submission you allow, or to take that of another as they share in your body, as equals, the whore you choose to be only ever an expression of the might claimed through ownership of your own sexuality?</p>
<p>You could be glorious, Ferdinand. You could have men weep at your feet for a chance to suck your cock, for the privilege that would be your pleasure spent, spilled as nectar on their lips.</p>
<p>Until then.</p>
<p>Yours, were you mature enough to heed any advice I am able to give,<br/>A committed realist, even in matters of banter and fucking,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: SFW, pre-TS, Hubert finds out Ferdinand has a preference for male partners, discusses the hypocrisy of it, as usual is rather repressed and hypocritical himself in the process.</p>
<p>This letter is prompted by Bearz, who I know also enjoys sadness and therefore got a special, rare dose of early Hubert not really feeling very much at all, and still being rather detached from Ferdinand. Which in my book is the saddest thing there is.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the clueless buffoon who deems propriety relative to his childish desire for attention,</p>
<p>Why is it that weak men are so fond of revealing their mediocre hypocrisy at any given chance and turn?</p>
<p>You were yet another splendid example on display today, when the sweltering heat of summer caused you to cast away your shirt during training, and decide it was appropriate to traipse around wearing nothing but your undershirt thereafter.</p>
<p>Yes, I am fuming. Not so much at the audacity of it—after all, we are all well acquainted with the naked torso of the Gautier boy—but more so at the downright scandalous revelation I happened to overhear today.</p>
<p>Dorothea was taking much glee in the fact that many ladies in other classes were amazed at how freckles bloomed across your shoulders within hours of them gracing the sun. When teased about the potential for such attention, that a noble such as yourself could easily claim as part of his grand scheme for bringing glory and continuity to your family name, a truth escaped your lips that I believe would have been best kept to yourself:</p>
<p>That you so happen to prefer the affections of men.</p>
<p>Now, there are many secrets in this monastery that I have sought to make mine to keep, but this is one I wish had never graced my ears.</p>
<p>It reveals yet another trait of yours that illustrates what an ignorant, preposterously stupid mess of contradictions you are. Are you simply dense, blaring to the world regurgitated ideals of tradition and nobility that are contrary to your own disposition without the awareness of their opposition?</p>
<p>For in what world could you hope to gain the affections of a man, and at the same time uphold traditions of crests, of lineage, of family names preserved by blood and politics rather than the expression of anything remotely human and nurturing?</p>
<p>Or was this a lie, a fake piece of gossip traded in exchange for peace or to redirect the teasing towards a topic that in reality holds no power over your emotions, and therefore made it easier to bear the brunt of its repetition at your expense?</p>
<p>I shall never know because I find it impossible to trust a single word or statement that leaves your lips, stunted as your opinions are, hypocritical in their lack of critical reflection.</p>
<p>What would it take, for you to face the world with honesty?</p>
<p>To either lace your undershirt back up and hide those shoulders, or assume the weight they bare and reveal them in all their sunkissed vulnerability?</p>
<p>You cannot sit on the fence.</p>
<p>You cannot be the man we all know your father to want you to be, and wish to be held by a body much like your own.</p>
<p>You cannot even be your own person, for as long as you twist and turn, stretch and stuff, shape and mold yourself to provide the reaction you so often wrongly anticipate others want from you—so long as you behave like a child, no man will ever want to lay a hand on you.</p>
<p>What a shame.</p>
<p>I suppose it is not only disgust, but pity and sadness I feel upon knowing your secret.</p>
<p>Perhaps—no. This will suffice. For I fear the boy who so desperately wants to believe his own lie already suffers enough with every smile he dispenses, with every cry for attention whose fulfilment only serves to bolster a fakery, an image that any encounter with reality will shatter and break.</p>
<p>Yours, in disdain as much as in understanding,<br/>A hardened, scarred, but always honest Hubert von Vestra.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, pre-TS, Ferdinand is picked as class dancer and spends the evening in an outfit that, in Hubert’s opinion, is a tad too small. Hubert hates it of course, compares Ferdinand to a variety of animals, discusses Ferdinand’s ass a normal amount.</p>
<p>Thank you Rom, for giving me a very welcome opportunity to write Hubert angry at Ferdinand's ass in dancer garb.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the peacock of a man whose vanity we were all forced to bear witness to this evening,</p>
<p>Yes, we are aware. For you would not have given anyone this evening the benefit of the doubt, would you? As usual lacking any decorum or subtlety when it comes to an opportunity to put yourself on display.</p>
<p>You may be surprised to hear, but you are not an animal, Ferdinand. Though your behavior this evening could cause one to think otherwise: after all, you can find descriptions of such flagrant displays in our biology books, those that detail with care the mating rituals of creatures large and small.</p>
<p>What did you fancy yourself to be tonight, Ferdinand? A bird, fluttering about in its newfound plumage, the dancer's garb the Professor gifted you lifting an ego already out of considerate proportion to the young man who sports it?</p>
<p>Or would you rather be a dressage horse, whose hair is braided by more skilled hands, ones with functioning opposable thumbs of skill, rather than clumsy hooves that do little more than announce the horse's arrival? For unlike the bird whose feathers are its own, the dressage horse is but an accessory belonging to the one who trained it. It does little to earn the title it brings home, rather prances unaware, only able to follow instruction to the letter, and losing all value once its obedience fails to procure the prize destined for its owner. I would almost find it sad, if it weren't for the fact that you are not a horse, but a man with a brain. It would do you good to one day experiment with individual thought. Would you be able to function, without following the framework dictated by your status, a mere circumstance of birth? Who would you be without the name Aegir, a common mongrel without worth? A beast of burden, rather than a praised stallion whose coat is groomed to shine, a characteristic only granted by careful breeding and control?</p>
<p>Funny, how much you resemble the beasts you so adore.</p>
<p>Rather amusing to see the girls and ladies of the monastery fawn over you, comment on the way fabric prettily drapes over your chest, which in my humble opinion makes for a rather gross contrast to your rider's brawn. You're no longer the dainty noble child we once knew, slowly taking on the width of young adulthood. It irks me, as most things about you do, for you fail to keep up with the change, could not anticipate let alone process the effect a growth spurt would have on your frame. An outfit which otherwise may have allowed an acceptable compromise on modesty, now finds itself strained and spread, despite the tailoring adjusted at the last minute.<br/>How wonderful, I heard others say, for a cavalier to bring the title home. For a man of strength to display such grace, to sweep effortlessly across the hall as if floating on air.</p>
<p>Ridiculous.</p>
<p>I couldn't tell you which party they went to, for the event I found myself at was crass, disturbed by loud laughter and the constant jingling of cheap bells and bangles, for even when you stood or sat to rest, there was always at least one part of your body moving, restless with nerves. And what for? You won, for once in your miserable life! And yet you spent the evening drifting from one man's arm to the next, your own wrapped around this or that noblewoman's waist.</p>
<p>Were you perhaps aware of what I saw? Are you perhaps not quite as dumb as I think, and realized the outfit too small, the slit riding up past your thigh, the tunic riding up to sit at your waist?</p>
<p>Ferdinand, you spent most of the evening with your ass on display.</p>
<p>That no one said anything about it! Surely I could not have been the only one present to notice? I have to assume that people are kind enough to spare you the embarrassment, that no one would like to acknowledge the faux-pas out loud for fear of creating an even bigger scene, knowing your unflattering tendency to burst into tears in public.<br/>I find myself intent on doing the same, my incredulous silence a small price to pay to avoid your hysterics.</p>
<p>But I would dare say it. If it weren't for the thought of Edelgard chastising me, I would have said it hours ago to your face.</p>
<p>You looked like a downright whore, parading around the great hall with a few meager strips of fabric protecting your modesty—if we can still call it that, given how generous and perk the curvature of your hind muscle reveals itself to be.</p>
<p>I watched in confused dismay, the amount of times a hand would hover, that another would stare, for a person to catch a glance and turn away furtively only to wet their lips or bring a glass of wine to rest at them instead in distraction.</p>
<p>Yes, I would have drunk myself into a stupor too, if I were forced to hold a civil conversation with a boy who carries himself like a little harlot, like all he wants is for someone to bend him over a table and shove a dick deep inside him. Is that what you were hoping for? That for once in your life you had enough attention and acknowledgment for someone to think to take you home, to give the prized pony a carrot or two for his performance?</p>
<p>I bet that loud mouth of yours could fit several cocks at once, and that is likely what it would take to get you to shut up, to choke you until your eyes roll into the back of your head so that for once in your life you stop trying so goddess damned hard and simply lay down to take what life has actually deemed you worthy of.</p>
<p>Or would you be a stallion kept to stud? Shameless in your need to procreate, to preserve the lineage attached to your name, filling whatever hole you can with copious, desperate amounts of seed.</p>
<p>Either way, I shan't be surprised if someone helps themselves to you this evening, holds you against a wall and watches you spread your legs, ready to take or give anything in exchange for a little attention, a little validation that yes, Ferdinand von Aegir has a body, perhaps a fine one at that, and its suitability for dancing likely translates to an aptitude in fucking.</p>
<p>Not that you would have had any practice.</p>
<p>I pity the one who would believe the lie of performance, who would ignore the grating annoyance of your character just for the chance to fuck one of the roundest asses in the monastery.</p>
<p>Hardly worth it, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Yours, appropriately clothed, aware that not everyone would enjoy seeing my private business on display,<br/>An ever aggravated, ferociously opposed to social gatherings and celebrations of inane achievements,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, post-ts, post-confession, they just had their first kiss, Hubert and Ferdinand got carried away in public after confessing feelings for each other, Hubert escapes when they have to pull away because he already made a mess of himself, thirsts like a man who hasn’t had water in weeks.</p>
<p>Look Omer used the words "firsts" and "size queen" in their prompt so you have them to thank for how wanton this is. Good job Hubert.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the— <strike>to my</strike> Ferdinand.</p>
<p>Saints. Flames. Did this—did we truly? Could it be that I have gone mad?</p>
<p>Yes. I have lost all reason. I am dreaming, unconscious, hypnotized and hoodwinked into thinking that somehow, we just. You. I am struggling to think. Struggling to breathe even, having returned to my quarters after we—</p>
<p>Ferdinand, oh Ferdinand, did we truly just kiss? Do my long years of yearning deceive me, or did you lean in just as I did, hesitated in time with me, crashed upon the cusp of my hope as I did yours, lips meeting in harsh, desperate kisses? Were it not for the lingering taste of blood, the cut you selfishly tore into my lower lip when you bit me, lacking in patience and subtlety— Ferdinand, was that your first kiss? Is that why we exchanged more teeth and saliva than gentle sensation, why you shuddered and mewled like the most wanting, but most dangerous of kittens, refusing to let me out of your scrambling grip?</p>
<p>You fill my senses to madness, the memory of you overwhelming in its complete sensuality—your lips, fingertips at my throat, behind my ear, trailing down my jacket to rest at my hip which you gripped with that unholy strength of yours, left a dull pain that tomorrow likely will be celebrated by blue blooming on my skin—I am wild, wild from it still, even though we pulled apart furtive and flushed, for fear of being interrupted.</p>
<p>If only I could have had the courage to take your hand in mine, drag you back here with me. Later, I rasped out. Find me after dinner. Thank the goddess you smiled and laughed at that, flushed and timid, for my heart would well and truly have broken otherwise. It is not your look of horror as you watched blood drip down my chin when we tore apart from the sound of footsteps that motivated my decision, no. It is something altogether more revealing, something I had not predicted, something more than the fear of my desire for you prematurely made public that had me reeling.</p>
<p>I spent myself. Oh what a pathetic embarrassment of a man I am, virgin to your touch, the magnanimous generosity of all that is Ferdinand von Aegir too much to bear, too much to experience even a kiss, the mere friction of hardness under our clothes, without becoming a sticky, disgusting mess for it!</p>
<p>I want you. I have wanted you for so long, I cannot hope to control myself now that a reality I thought a banished dream has somehow come to pass, that when I admitted to needing distance from you you cried out, begged to know what you had done wrong, how you could have misinterpreted our closeness as anything but what you thought it had come to be…</p>
<p>How could our closeness mean anything other than a genuine fondness for one another, a desire to share affection with one another, an indication that we would maybe… Hold a desire to court each other?</p>
<p>Fuck. I’m hard again.</p>
<p>How can a man pretend to cope and put up the usual facade, when his heart and body thrum so loud, so full of hope and relief?</p>
<p>Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit! I cannot for the life of me stop thinking about it!</p>
<p>How am I to survive the long afternoon ahead, when all I can think of is Ferdinand von Aegir, running his hands and lips all over me, finally fucking me with that—</p>
<p>That.</p>
<p>That apparently enormous dick of his. The hard cock I felt through those breaches, unmistakable in its size, for your breeches are THIN, Ferdinand, thin enough that I felt the curve and width of it, the strain of it, barely grazed the smallest spot of damp peeking through the fabric struggling to contain it.</p>
<p>Saints, I pray that the crazed way in which you practically tore at my collar to get your lips on my neck translates to more than a mistake of crazed relief, that my punishment for keeping us apart so long shan’t be that you regain your sense of propriety behind closed doors, and that you rip me apart, claim me and make me yours with that dick the moment you set foot over this threshold.</p>
<p>Luckily, I am also rather fond of pain, so I shall gladly spare us the wait if you are inexperienced enough to have me raw without question, I shall scream for it, let my mind go numb from the pain of riding your virgin cock dry, show you what a body worn from self-imposed torture can do to bridge ache over into the realm of unimaginable pleasure.</p>
<p>Yours, over and over and over for as long as you will have me,<br/>An incredulous, deranged with lust, wanting, needing,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, pre-ts, pre-confession, Hubert sees Ferdinand return from his morning ride, feelings of lust are very begrudgingly experienced, mentions of fantasy BSDM, riding crop, gagging, oral, yes he gets carried away.</p>
<p>A lovingly repressed prompt for Bohemienne, who would have Ferdinand parade himself around with his wrist peaking out from under a pair of riding gloves. A scandalous prompt if I ever received one, resulting in an equally scandalous letter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the cavalier who subsumed the despicable brat I had expected to be confronted with,</p>
<p>There must have been a mistake with the dosage of poison in my morning coffee, for it seems that I experienced a hallucination today.</p>
<p>Yet there is a chance that the fault lies not in an empirical error, but in an anomaly of thought and spirit.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was the morning light, the streaking rays of sunshine that set your hair ablaze, unapologetic in its resemblance to the sun. Magnified by the low fog, the halo framing your visage purely meteorological phenomenon, absent of subjective interpretation. After all, the perception and refraction of light is the very mechanism that allows us to see, so the kaleidoscope of beams bursting through the recent, fresh green of spring leaves could have altered my vision much like a potential fever from poisoning.</p>
<p>Still, I cannot shake the memory, it is as pervasive as the worry that now eats at my admittedly paranoid disposition.</p>
<p>When I close my eyes, I see you. Not only the mundane experience of you, not just the Ferdinand I am forced to share a class with, at times share my meals with, exchange painful, exasperated words with.</p>
<p>It is as if my perspective has shifted, and the light of day revealed someone I never knew stood before me. Is this the fever of young adulthood? The time when the mind is incapable of triumphing over the body, a feat I thought to have mastered, the crest of a wave I thought long crashed and broken against the cliff of my unshakeable resolve?</p>
<p>Is it coincidence then, that light should cast away the shadow of my disdain, glisten across the beads of sweat on your brow, highlight the paler complexion of your usually covered wrist when you gripped your mount’s bridle tight? Had the dice of circumstance rolled just a little further, would I now be thinking of another?</p>
<p>It is impossible to know, when consumed by the fiery conscience of your form, of the height from which you towered, of your scent noticeable over that of your horse when you dismounted, ran a gloved hand through your hair to make yourself presentable—</p>
<p>Flames, I remember thinking, for the love of all that is proper, for your apparent heraldry of noble ideals, put your shame away, you scandalous harlot!</p>
<p>Yet there was nothing to hide, nothing on display! You were clothed, you’d been riding, and I stood besotted, blood pumping for a fantasy that you are certainly not the one I shall ever have fulfill. </p>
<p>But I must dispel it. I must tell you, even in secret, that I will never, not once, have you touch me the way my fevered desire suggests.</p>
<p>If I take myself in hand and think of you, it is a bitter medicine, a necessity born of accident, of the physical nature of the human heart detached from any rational thought.</p>
<p>If I think of you mounting me like you would your horse, leather crop in hand, well it is because you would have to bind me to make me your own, for never would I willingly submit to receiving pleasure from someone I so abhor.</p>
<p>If I were to take your cock between my lips, it would be due to a thirst out of my control, a need so base it was as far removed from your person as is humanly possible.</p>
<p>Yes Ferdinand, I like cock, and what of it? When the fever takes you, it does not matter to whom the dick belongs. It only matters that the image is pleasing, and if subliminal tricks of light would infer that your body and presence is aesthetically sufficient, it is in no way validation of your worth as a person.</p>
<p>It is a fat cock like any other, which I would simply use to get off on, much like how you would use me from behind, hands bound, cheek dragging across the ground as you pound into my gaping, hungry hole.</p>
<p>I shall find completion and you will disappear, leave me spent and tied up on the floor as if you had never set foot in my room. Or the stable, wherever you would see fit to fuck me raw.</p>
<p>Saints, I need to suck a cock.</p>
<p>Any cock. Except yours. Never.</p>
<p>Is that clear, Ferdinand? It is bad enough that you haunt my thoughts.</p>
<p>Yours, preferably bound and gagged and kept stupid to not know the shame of desiring you, <br/>A far too physically wound up, forever aggravated,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content: SFW, post-TS, post-canon, post-confession, Hubert considers how horses remind him of Ferdinand in his absence, and struggles with how much he misses him.</p>
<p>Prompted by the wonderful Unrivalling, who asked for absence and mentions of horse-riding... And who got a heavy dose of feelings on the theme.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the one who feels like a ghost rather too at home in my thoughts,</p>
<p>There would always come a day that we would be forced to separate for weeks or months at a time. The very ambition that brought us together, sees us forge ahead together, unstoppable even in times of war—it was always clear it would one day also keep us apart.</p>
<p>I fear you would be amused to hear I went riding today, afraid that upon our reunion I would no longer be able to keep up with you for the morning ride—or suffer pains at the hand of your longing that made riding altogether more inconvenient than the usual throbbing to which I am accustomed. </p>
<p>No, I suppose that is rather insincere. I miss you, much as the moon chases the sun into the dawn of a new day.</p>
<p>And the horses are the closest I can come to feeling you at my side again. I do not even like the dreadful beasts, for all that I have come to depend on them. Yes, you may laugh, for that is not so different to how my perception of you has changed over the years.</p>
<p>Dearest, it is simply dreadful. Even their snorts now remind me of you, of your boisterous unashamed laughter that more often than not forces my own stony facade to crack into a smile. The way they stamp their feet, the long curve of their powerful musculature mirror to the best rider in all of Adrestia. A man whose own hair tumbles a fierce mane over the taught muscle of a carved, elongated neck along which I have had the privilege to run scarred hands.</p>
<p>Oh, to think that you have no idea how beautiful you are. When we meet again, I shan’t spare a single breath until I have reminded you, stolen you away from your long ride for a tumble in the hay, heard your laughter ring across the stables I know you will have dearly missed.</p>
<p>Come home to me in one piece, Ferdinand. Do not break this heart so young in its timid expression of feelings long thought puerile. Do not leave me alone with the knowledge of what it feels like to know love, and be loved in return. I fear I shall be half the man for it.</p>
<p>Well, it seems the more I write, the more I fear receiving this letter will bring you sadness rather than joy. I do not think I shall send it, though if I do perhaps part of the enjoyment will be knowing of the consideration I gave to how you would receive my words.</p>
<p>What can I give you when we are so far apart Ferdinand, that could ever hope to brighten your days?</p>
<p>I feel this is your area of expertise rather than mine. Teas, small trinkets like rings, ribbons, objects of beauty that serve to enhance your own—those I know to give. To give, to serve, to support by unwavering presence—but never in thought, not since the day Edelgard was taken away. I have never learnt to deal with absence, since my childhood only did my best to avoid it, to become the shadow of those I love to never miss a moment when my presence could save them pain.</p>
<p>What gift of words can I pitifully cobble together that could ever hope to mend the tear of absence?</p>
<p>None, I suppose. I do not know. I have never felt like this before.</p>
<p>Forgive me Ferdinand, I fear this letter is another one for the pile.</p>
<p>One day, I promise to let you know.</p>
<p>How much I miss you dearly, how I long to see you so.</p>
<p>I hope you feel the same, and I hope you do not forget me.</p>
<p>And perhaps you’ll hear me in the scratching of someone’s nib, see me in the long cast shadow of a tree, or feel my cold hands in the chill of the night you must suffer through alone.</p>
<p>Much like how horses now make me smile, how they remind me that someday we will stand together once more.</p>
<p>Yours, faithful and sore from a pathetic attempt at leisurely horse riding,</p>
<p>A rather pained, lonely, at a loss for words Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: SFW, post-TS, pre-confession, considerations of life, death, and apathy. Ferdinand saves Hubert from a close brush with death, Hubert feels robbed- of what he isn’t certain.</p><p>Please be aware that death is the very earnest focus of this letter, and Hubert is not entirely positive about his relationship to life.</p><p>Thanks to Gimladen for this prompt. You asked for Ferdinand saving Hubert, and I suppose… Hubert as usual wonders why he is worth saving. This was a moment of reflection for me too and the headspace this prompt took me to was very intimate, thank you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the knight who found the pounding hope in my heart louder than the nihilistic acceptance of fatality,</p><p>Each brush with death reveals a form of truth up to that moment obscured by the humdrum of living or the angry call of survival.</p><p>Often, these are mistakes. Regrets, realizations about things we hold dear.</p><p>Always, some reflection about the nature of your own life, now threatening to slip away.</p><p>This may sound obvious and trite, coming from a man such as myself. One well versed in inflicting death, in skirting close enough to it to steal whatever treasure it abstracts from the living.</p><p>And yet the commonplace and mundane prove time and again to be full of their own surprises, reality infinitely complex in its variation, be it in depth of knowing or in the metamorphosis of what is already known. Indeed, every close call is a learning experience. One I do not shy away from, nor am I afraid of.</p><p>What secret did we reveal today, as we clung to each other down in the dirt, as you yelled for a healer, cradled my head tight against your breast? You were only holding my neck stable, of that I am certain, for you’d saved me moments earlier from the flurry of arrows that followed the arc of my fall from a bucking, wounded horse.</p><p>Your breath heavy against my ear, your words softening as I drifted away. I found myself unable to think, the moment of clarity I long for stolen away by your glaring, overwhelming presence.</p><p>What truth did you keep from me Ferdinand, in claiming my life as your own to save? What reasoning did you keep from me, when your tears mixed with the blood and dirt on my face?</p><p>“Let me be,” I remember saying. “Please. I am ready to die.”</p><p>The words croaked out, dry and cracked like my sorry hands, weak as they were in their attempt to hold on across your shoulders. Were you always so broad? No, I suppose not.</p><p>We have known each other a long time after all.</p><p>“I will not allow it,” you replied. “Not you, Hubert. Never.”</p><p>Not me? Not me, as opposed to anyone else? I do not understand, it all escapes me still. Perhaps I need a lie down, the shrill sound of arrows whirling through the air rings between my ears. My heart hasn’t stopped pounding, and my body is intent on all manner of reactions, none remotely close to the rest I’ve been advised, which for once I would be intent on taking to ensure I can return to the battlefield on shortest notice. It is as if nothing has changed, as if I am caught in that moment, held captive in the memory of your arms. As if I have inherited your warmth, your breathless laugh when Linhardt announced there was nothing to fear and that I looked in far worse condition than I in fact was.</p><p>Why am I smiling? This is not a laughing matter.</p><p>For I carelessly revealed my deepest secret of all to you, and you have not looked at me the same way since. And why? I do not know, and cannot tell. Have you hoarded this knowledge from me, locked it away behind those bright, somehow more knowing eyes than those I looked into yesterday?</p><p>Please don’t tell, Ferdinand. Not when every step we make towards conquest, towards change, relies entirely on the masquerade I learnt at a young age to engage in: that there is a purpose to life, that there is a meaning other than whichever mandated narrative is dictated to you by your upbringing, or whichever lie you choose to tell yourself so you can sleep soundly at night and have confidence that you will want to wake up the next day, rather than see the night through, forever, time vanquished by the promise of eternal peace.</p><p>You’ve heard me tell troops and friends that living is a choice. And I stand by it, because it is no matter how you look at it: it’s a choice that we make, a constant assessment day in, day out, in a struggle to extend the length and definition of whatever living means to us.</p><p>And what if you have stared death in the face too often, too young, to see the world for anything other than the manifestation of life and death as equal, identical rather than opposites?</p><p>Then you borrow meaning from others, hide behind ideals of servitude and duty.</p><p>Ah, yes, what is it you told me earlier, before leaving the infirmary?</p><p>“You may be ready to die, but I am not ready to lose you yet. Please forgive my selfishness.”</p><p>Oh Ferdinand.</p><p>You are the most generous man I have ever met.</p><p>Yours,<br/>
Somehow still alive, somehow still searching, and in no small part thanks to you,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, pre-TS, pre-confession, Ferdinand jumps into the pond to save a student, Hubert is not happy with the sight of Ferdinand’s wet white shirt, and considers Ferdinand’s body and better uses for it.</p>
<p>Thanks Damaidenmonster for this fun prompt, it was so indulgent and just the kind of silly sexual frustration I LOVE to put Hubert through.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the clown whose only achievement is perhaps reaching new overwrought heights of physical comedy,</p>
<p>Are you not content with being an odious, walking, living parody of all that is associated with your noble heritage? Are you not satisfied until you’ve put yourself on gratuitous display, a hunk of flesh on show with a brain only for its own name?</p>
<p>Saints, even I grow tired of this ire. All I want is some peace and quiet in my thoughts, not the sinking reminder of that matters I concern myself with in the dark are constantly overshone by the likes of you, the nobility whose gaudy pomp and circumstance covers up heinous deals made under the table to keep the wine flowing and the pigs well fed.</p>
<p>Your eternal performance is exhausting. You manage to turn what should be seen as a selfless, courageous act into an advertisement for your own character, which in itself reveals only how egotistical and opportunistic you are.</p>
<p>Could you not have simply held a hand out to the poor girl who tripped and fell in the pond? Did you have to tear off your jacket, exclaim your intent for all to hear, signed with your name lest any of us should have forgotten it in the past five minutes?</p>
<p>No, you had to show off your diving form, had to haul the girl up yourself, both of you collapsed together on the pier, soaked and panting and laughing while a crowd gathered to fuss.</p>
<p>The way you beamed at the accolades, shook the water out of your hair, wrung it out of your shirt, pretended like it was nothing, claimed anyone would have done the same.</p>
<p>No, you imbecile. A decent person wouldn’t have turned a potential misfortune into an opportunity for praise. Well, you did accompany the poor girl to the infirmary, but you had to make a whole other ordeal out of that too!</p>
<p>Traipsing around like you did your dripping uniform. Could you not have at least put your jacket back on, and spared us all the miserable sight underneath!?</p>
<p>The sight of your drenched shirt, its crisp white weighed down to transparency by the pond water you graciously dripped over half the monastery. How it clung to your frame and highlighted every angle and curve of it. The valley of your collarbone, its raised, arrogant protuberance framing a broader chest than necessary on a boy so small of mind. Or perhaps precisely for that reason, for what else can you rely on but your body, when the space between your ears is the graveyard of all original, independent thought?</p>
<p>What use is that knowledge to anyone other than the poor woman who will one day share your married bed? For sadly I am not the only one to know that you are so intent on propriety that you see it beneath yourself to engage in matters carnal and base, devoid of the richness born of a committed, loving relationship—though the only commitment ever made to you will likely be political. And you are if anything even more infatuated with the illusion of recognition and power than true love and understanding, so I suppose the nuance lost shan’t be felt for your ignorance.</p>
<p>Yet I am forever burdened with it, the memory of how perk your nipples stood poking through the fabric from the cold. Or was your dick just as ready, hard from the attention, leaking in your smalls when no one could distinguish the stain of it for your already water-clogged clothes?</p>
<p>What choked sounds would you have made instead of nervous laughter, had someone straddled you where you lay after clambering back out of the water, pinched those slutty tits of yours and asked if this pretty little thing had a name?</p>
<p>Oh, how delicious the irony would be.</p>
<p>“I am Ferdinand von Aegir, and I will be your fuckhole for the day.”</p>
<p>The same words you bore us all with daily, turned to their true purpose:</p>
<p>“Did I do well? Am I not the best?”</p>
<p>Pathetic, needy slut. You would do well to take a dick or two in all of your orifices. What is it you always say? Ah, yes:</p>
<p>“Did you see that Hubert?”</p>
<p>Yes, I see, I see it all, only because you give me no choice through your constant demands for my attention.</p>
<p>It pains me to admit, and it is to spare that ego of yours any further growth that I will never say as much to your face: that you are, perhaps, not entirely displeasing to the eye. Hardly an achievement, and something that will no doubt fade with age. A fact not worthy of notice.</p>
<p>Though I may also be entertained by the thought of pushing your head back under water. Yes, that must be it. And if I imagine my dick shoved up your arse as I do so, well, men sometimes have needs, and if I must borrow your likeness and suffocate it in the process, then so be it.</p>
<p>Yours,<br/>Though there is a thought in which you are mine, wanting, begging, gaping,<br/>And I am hungry for your punishment, your pain, to put you in your place until the only name left on your lips is:<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: Mild NSFW, post-ts, post-canon, they’re married, Ferdinand is putting on some weight after the war, some of his shirts are a little small, Hubert can’t stop thinking about it.</p>
<p>To the three people who submitted a near identical prompt for this: I love you. Thank you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To my husband dearest,</p>
<p>I address you this letter in the hopes of providing some comfort for that growing insecurity of yours—well, this paper is ruined already. If I ever let you set eyes upon the words “growing insecurity” I imagine you will never let me hear the end of it, so hilarious that you find any accidental play on words that I make.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is for the best I turned to pen and paper once more for practice, given my often frayed relationship with the spoken word.</p>
<p>Ferdinand, as we each get on in our years, I fear you may have gotten the worse end of the deal when it comes to our marriage. For I do not see how I can ever hope to compare to the beauty that fills your curves as peacetime keeps us well-fed and often chained to our respective desks. You’ve asked me not to chastise you when you bemoan your looks fading with age, but how am I supposed to keep my mouth shut when yours is allowed to spout such utter nonsense!</p>
<p>Preposterous, that you should refer to yourself as anything less than an adonis, a luxurious wine maturing and ripening with age. Irreplaceable, unique, and beautiful. That is what you are to me.</p>
<p>You drive me to constant distraction Ferdinand, and the effect is only worsening with age. Perhaps because my stubborn resolve weakens as affection for you becomes an easy habit, though mostly I suspect it is because I am irrevocably attracted to this version of you softening at the edges—filling out clothes you refuse to retire because of misplaced attachment or frugality.</p>
<p>Not that I would dare complain, when undoing but one of your waistcoat buttons is enough to reveal a shirt tight to bursting, nipples poking pert and hard over the hem of velvet, where your tits are no longer restrained, now full enough to cup with my hands, squeeze the abundant handfuls of them and watch them threaten to pop buttons with their weight.</p>
<p>I know you joke that no one can see it under the waistcoat, so why bother wasting fabric on a new set of shirts, when this one has at least another few month’s wear in it?</p>
<p>But I know your shirts are tight Ferdinand, I know intimately the wonderful shape and richness your body is beginning to display, and I can not for the life of me take my mind off it when we are in meetings together.</p>
<p>And if I could have my way, I would see those shirts removed from public use and kept neatly hanging in our closet to dress you in them for bed, so that I can suck on your nipples chafing under the taught fabric, made translucent from how much I salivate over you, still clothed, unable to wait. </p>
<p>Yes yes, I am hopelessly in love with you, impossibly aroused by the mere thought of the curve of your plump ass in riding breeches.</p>
<p>Your body has always been an entirely unfair advantage of yours in this relationship, but I suppose one thing age teaches you is that marriage is no longer a competition, but a blissful surrender to the wonders of the only man I have ever loved so, lusted for so, held dear in my heart as I do you every waking second of the day.</p>
<p>I love you Ferdinand, and the more of you there is, the more excuses I have to express it.</p>
<p>Though perhaps we shall fight over those shirts, because if I get hard one more time in front of our colleagues and friends when you bend over papers or dare to move even more than an inch, I believe I will lose whatever feeble grasp on sanity I have left.</p>
<p>To make up for it, I shall deviously ply you with your favourite sweets, buns, and teacakes. After all, your birthday is coming up soon, isn’t it? And it seems only fitting that I should enjoy a little opulent indulgence with you, both in the form of my gift to you and in the beautiful strength of your body.</p>
<p>Suffocating between your gloriously thick thighs, yes. Eating out your pink arsehole while you smack your lips and lick equally pink icing off your fingers above. Take you on all fours, so I can enjoy the sight of your tits hanging, grab onto your delicious curves as I breed you fuller than you ever have been, stuffed in all ways, crying tears of joy from it.</p>
<p>Flames. Yes. I sense a plan. I will show you Ferdinand, help you understand how I could only ever want more of you, never less.</p>
<p>Your husband, devoted, enamored, enchanted by all you that you are and ever will be,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, pre-TS, pre-confession, Ferdinand trips, Hubert thinks Ferdinand is an idiot but really all he does is unhealthy fixate on Ferdinand’s ass. Mentions of spit, flogging.</p>
<p>To the anon who prompted this, I love Ferdinand’s ass as much as you do. Hubert hasn’t made his mind up yet.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To no one worthy of validation, the intent of these words devoid of weight so as not to enable the very cause of their indignation,</p>
<p>My patience is at its limit.</p>
<p>Have I not progressed past this fixation? Is this unfortunate experience of life circumstantial, foisted upon me by the spectacle that you make of yourself, day in, day out?</p>
<p>Why must everything about you be so loud, so unavoidable, so omnipresent? Is this what happens to the psyche when limited in both physical and intellectual confines, my very self contorting to fit into these despicable monastery walls long enough to let the farce play out till its premature end?</p>
<p>There is only so much idiocy I can take, only so much I can witness before my tongue truly slips and I reveal what I honestly think of you. But no, Edelgard would not have it, she would rather kick me in the shin and warn me to bite my tongue, than expose you to the truth of your situation.</p>
<p>So for the sake of my own peace of mind, I must turn to ink in order to exile these thoughts and condemn them to paper once more.</p>
<p>What kind of supposed knight in training trips over his own lance and feet during a simple manoeuvre!? Basic drills no less, that I was observing on the Professor’s instruction (pointless), and oh! What a sight. Truly, an enlightening learning experience!</p>
<p>Falling head first, face planted in the dirt, barely catching yourself in time and ending with your backside on display for all to see. Ten long, agonizing seconds. What are you, a toddler?! Did you forget how to walk, Ferdinand?! How to push yourself off the ground?!</p>
<p>Who were you hoping would see, when you groaned and arched where you were splayed, legs spread, lifting your ass up rather than having the decency to, oh I don’t know, lie down? Roll over? Was it for the Professor? A sly, crass attempt at making it clear that you are available for the taking?</p>
<p>But no, instead we were all subjected to a backside stretching out almost-too-small pants, the faint line of your undergarments visible where the curvature of your behind fills out your trouser.</p>
<p>Lucky you are, that most present had the decency to look away or rush to your help. I was not about to enable your behaviour as such, and kept a careful watch from the sidelines. After all, that is what I was instructed to do today, was I not?</p>
<p>And yes, you were right to try and hide that nervous blush when the Professor helped you up, to furtively look away when our eyes met. To bat away those who made a fuss, assuring them that the graze tearing across your cheek was but a scratch. Rather obviously drawing attention away from your blunder and back to your overblown sense of self-importance.</p>
<p>But I see you, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>And for some blasted, unfathomable reason I cannot forget the times I do.</p>
<p>I am cursed with the memory of your behind bobbing up and down as you groaned and struggled to push yourself up.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I’ve never been forced to consider this anatomical feature quite so much before. Yes, I do have a predilection for the male form, but I mostly do not concern myself with living examples. Either imaginary, or dead for research purposes, that is where my experience lies. So for you to leave so little to the imagination, well… Let us say that a plump arse is a plump arse, and good to consider sinking teeth and cock into regardless of its owner. Though that may be in part due to the sounds you made while writing in pain, which allows one little room for doubt as to how you would sound upon receiving a hard slap across those cheeks. Or would you rather squeal from a cock shoved in raw, after having offered your whore ass up to be loosened by rough unforgiving fingers, to be spat into for slick, to howl in need for how wanting the cold spit slowly dripping down to your balls leaves you?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is hardly difficult to assess whether or not your flesh would sway and redden from the resounding clap. For you may be lithe, but it is clear that in places you have not yet outgrown the easy life of luxury your status afforded you as a child. Perhaps that is where we find the explanation for the taught fabric, the way it clings to your skin and looks as if it is about to tear between your thighs.</p>
<p>What little help it would’ve needed to come apart. </p>
<p>In any case, I suggest you have your uniform refitted.</p>
<p>Unless you are enough of a slut to be aware of the effect, which would not surprise me given what happened today.</p>
<p>Well, if that is what you want, I shall happily get myself off to the thought of your ass flogged and fucked raw, slapping against my thighs as I pound into you.</p>
<p>Goodnight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content: SFW, pre-ts, pre-confession, Hubert is buying something for Edelgard at the market and catches feelings from a smile directed at him.</p>
<p>To the Anon author of the original prompt, I'm sorry I didn't include the socks. Still, I hold the image of Ferdinand buying socks dear in my heart.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the young man I met at the market today, whose smile shouldn’t have been such a revelation,</p>
<p>I did not expect this chance encounter, nor do I know where it leaves me.</p>
<p>We all know the tales of romance, the men and women who claim to have felt a burning certainty, as if struck by lightning when they lay eyes on the one fated to be their beloved.</p>
<p>Poppycock of course, but I fear what I experienced today may be the grain of truth in this grand exaggeration of how one moment, one piece of evidence can shift your entire perspective on the world, your opinion of another human being.</p>
<p>You see, while accompanying Edelgard, I found myself browsing trinkets in search of a gift for the lady, after she urged me to “try and do something of inconsequence for myself.” While keeping a comfortable distance from the stall selling her favourite stuffed toys, I heard a giggle that caught my attention. It was shy and small, hesitant and furtive. The sort of sound that sets you at ease, urges you to take pause should you accidentally spook whatever creature is learning to find its voice. A bit like a shy bird, whose song yet has to carry across to the next tree over.</p>
<p>A child, laughing through his growing pains. A young man, explaining that he had come to purchase the finest of teas, but that he found himself tempted by a ribbon, certainly better suited as a gift to a deserving lady. And yet, he continued, there is an artistry to the fabric, is there not? Did this type of lace come from the atelier founded by the retired nuns of the church in Fhirdiad? Could it not also be repurposed as a decorative handkerchief, should one not have the appropriate stature to wear it?</p>
<p>Every question vessel to its own answer, the hesitation unfounded, an honest confession of insecurity. Darling, the shopkeeper had called it, as he surmised that the buyer seemed to know more about its provenance than he did.</p>
<p>I was too caught up in the odd sincerity of the interaction to make myself scarce, and when the young man turned away from the stall with a blush caught on his cheeks, our eyes met.</p>
<p>And he smiled at me.</p>
<p>A rare sort of smile, it would seem. For this smile struck me in a way I didn’t think possible, not from a man who in reality is far from a stranger.</p>
<p>I thought I knew you, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>And yet I find new parts of you folded neatly between the creases of a cracking image. The one I routinely take a knife to, carving the smallest nicks into the mask of your confidence as if cracking it would grant me the sight of your true self, bleeding and raw. The only certainty I know of, when pain inflicted to others is repurposed as your own safety.</p>
<p>But the image of you that haunts me is not one of your making, no.</p>
<p>It is a trick of perception, a bias I cultivate consciously and at the same time fall prey to.</p>
<p>For while there is much to vilify about you, your laughter and smiles today reminded me of those stolen from children less fortunate than you. Children who had their voices smothered, that I swore to never forget, to fight for, to take revenge for in honor of their memory. To protect those still here from anyone arrogant enough to deny the truth of their atrocities, to make the culprits scream and beg for forgiveness and mercy. A judgment to be passed by those brave enough to take it and rewrite their reality, those who should follow a visionary like Edelgard.</p>
<p>What I mean by that is, people not like you. You, always so loud, so ignorant and dismissive, hoarding the recognition you unjustly claim as birthright. And yet, what I saw today made me reconsider that image.</p>
<p>Perhaps… There is a chance that you are still growing, still hesitating to find your own feet. A side of you clawing at the mask from within, that each stab of my dagger pushes back to its dark confines, suffocating it in turn like those I claim to take a stand for.</p>
<p>Let us call a truce. And though we may never speak of it, though I am still who I always have been, forked tongue and all…</p>
<p>I hope to meet that boy at the market again, quick on the draw when he complimented my choice of stuffed bear, when I had been preparing sharp words of dismissal in response to his freely given smile.</p>
<p>Yours, should you not give me cause to regret lowering my defences to give you the benefit of the doubt,<br/>A humbled, stricken,<br/>Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: NSFW, post-canon, post-confession, Ferdinand is away on a mission and Hubert longs for him. Mentions of thighs/intercrural, face-sitting, penetration, body worship, Hubert wants it bad basically.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the man I do not wish to burden with the guilt of my desire in his absence,</p>
<p>Though part of me knows you will thrive on the written attention, there is a weight to my want for you that I am not ready to place on our newly joined shoulders just yet.</p>
<p>Perhaps when it has ripened, when it tickles our senses dulled by time rather than tunes them to a need for which an outlet remains unavailable. Perhaps I am the coward, or the realist, fully aware that sharing this desire with you in written form will only leave me wanting for an answer, while the only answer I want is your return.</p>
<p>No, I am not especially prone to flights of fancy outside of the safe confines of my own mind. Wants are not so easily shared without consequence, and I am yet to find the steady footing I would require to send you these words without any doubt.</p>
<p>As such, I vow to expiate their existence by acknowledging a portion of it in the letter I shall indeed seal and send off on its way to you. Enough for you to take yourself in hand, find completion with their help in my absence, without the burden of their fully realized insanity as it grips my own mind.</p>
<p>For how could I live with myself, knowing I poisoned you with senseless depravity, a gift disguising only a trap of absence, longing, and frustration? No, not when I wish you only success and victory, however much I must convince myself that you may feel the same.</p>
<p>Because if you do, then you are as I am plagued by memories of when we last lay together, when we set each other ablaze and alight: how we fucked until exhaustion, and then found a new flame in the daring intimacy of trust and comfort, lazy unconscious touches keeping us close until the last possible moment.</p>
<p>Yet you see, our parting night was only a beginning, brought to an abrupt end by your departure for the mission that still keeps you from me. For what we started that night is a discovery of a passion that knows its own end, much like the fervor of a man close to death, overcoming unfathomable odds in a final swan song to survival.</p>
<p>I wonder Ferdinand, how I will hold you next knowing what it is to lose your touch now we are no longer afraid to admit how dear we are to each other. I hesitate to even say I think about it, for I live it, ache for it in a way that is entirely too physical to be a mere thought. That is what I want to spare you, the way my hands grow sweaty under my gloves when a reminder of you interrupts my workday. The distraction of it, the time lost to idling, and the novel embarrassment of taking myself in hand in my office, from simply wanting you there. In those moments you are an object of lust in my mind, all powerful for how simple-minded you render me.</p>
<p>My fantasies suddenly seem far closer to reality than before, and I fear for what I will subject us both to when I can dig my hands into your flesh once more. I will take my sweet time Ferdinand, for never again do I want to think of you and find an entry missing in my library of experience, like I have too many times these past few weeks.</p>
<p>How is it that I have not yet fucked your thighs until I cried from oversensitivity? What a crime, to have to imagine how they would taste, covered in my own spend mixed with your sweat. To have to wonder if you would come untouched, or if you would need far more, if you would commandeer my mouth after my own indulgence, sit on my face where I lie after having used your thighs for such selfish pleasure.</p>
<p>To have no choice but to loosen you up with my tongue, work long and hard for your acquiescence, the moment you open up for my mouth to devour the most intimate part of you. To marvel at those thighs all over again, as you hold yourself up effortlessly above me, now taught and thick and impossibly strong where moments before they yielded lush softness where my hands gripped them, fucked myself giddy into the wetness of my own seed on their freckled expanse.</p>
<p>And oh, for you to abuse that intolerable rider’s stamina of yours to take me, once my jaw is slack and my cock entirely spent, for your strength to hold me steady where mine wanes from indulging my own hunger without caring for yours, your arms around my waist, lifting me up and onto your lap, where your cock stands tall and willing still—</p>
<p>Ferdinand, I believe I would see a glimpse of the lie that is heaven in the moment I would welcome your cock home, having given you all I have to give, offering only this final solace through what remains of my mind and body.</p>
<p>I want you to destroy me, Ferdinand.</p>
<p>Come home to me victor, and claim your prize without reserve.</p>
<p>Yours, for however long and in however many ways we are yet to discover our desire for,<br/>
A wanting, longing, impossibly distracted without you,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content: SFW, post-ts, pre-confession, Hubert considers the effects Ferdinand has on morale, and how he himself isn’t immune to it. Takes place just before their A support.</p>
<p>I felt this prompt very deeply and I hope some of you reading it feel the same.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the one whose optimism is at times, more than the mortar he himself would claim, the very foundation of this shaking military edifice,</p>
<p>It has been some time now, since the Professor returned to us and breathed new life into a successful, yet flagging military enterprise.</p>
<p>On that point I do not have much to discuss, apart from a subtle nuance to the issue I cannot find the words to explain quite as eloquently as I would like to you in person, when I happen to catch those sorry sighs and glances you sometimes throw in the Professor’s direction.</p>
<p>You see, there are times when feelings render logic redundant. A fact, I feel, you often find yourself both deaf and blind to. More frustratingly so, this fact exists only as part of a very pointed dichotomy of your character: that your own ignorance as to the effect you have on others is what causes you to strive so tirelessly towards improving the measure of it.</p>
<p>And what words can I ever hope to offer, when reality itself fails in your eyes to provide sufficient evidence?</p>
<p>The impact of your optimism is so pervasive that I am now plagued by incessant commentary from others about my own disposition. Yet for all that our friends and comrades in arms remind me that a smile on my lips is more commonplace in your company, you seem to only see the opposite. You ask what is wrong, what more you can do, unaware of the way your presence in a room drives away a great deal of shadow, lifts spirits enough for the proof to find its way to my own carefully maintained facade.</p>
<p>What more evidence could I possibly give you other than the laughter and smiles blooming from others in your wake? Other than the energy that fills a room as you speak, overwhelming enough that I often have to make myself scarce, should a misplaced remark inadvertently sour the morale you so gracefully uplift?</p>
<p>For even if I am not one to practice its outward expression, and though I may have questioned your methods (yes alright, outright mocked) in the past, the results engendered by your optimism and general disposition are undeniable. Enough so that I find myself condemned to their further study, in a vain attempt to comprehend what it is about a demeanour I long found unbearable and aggravating that now builds and lifts others where, before the war, I only ever saw it serve to drive people away.</p>
<p>The formula is far from simple. It is not enough for you to walk into a room, no. Nor is it enough for you to extol recent battalion victories to maintain their momentum, to heap generous praise on individuals, or share words of hope in darker moments of loss. </p>
<p>There is a magnetism to your presence which amplifies the effect of the otherwise generic tools for motivation I described above. It is the careful coordination of your movements and tone of voice that captivate your audience’s attention with a skill I know to be practiced rather than unwitting talent. It is the very practice of your character, the unashamed way in which you describe your own failures, your genuine vulnerability that causes the odd flicker in your eye from tears that you quickly blink back, that has many hanging onto your every word. How tall you seem to stand not from your total height, but from how your neck carries a head held high, no matter the weight of the fear or sorrow it may hold. Never bowing, never failing, only bright eyes and a firmly set jaw, framing attractive features that lend themselves to your inclination for leadership. For the way you carry the spirits of everyone in the room is much like how you have learned to carry yourself: unflinching, powerful in a way that helps others feel safe, for you know to cultivate trust where someone like me can only sow doubt and fear. And to know that you are capable of this, that we can depend on you on behalf of so many in times of dire struggle, well… That is the thought that plants that smile not just on the soldiers’, but also on my face.</p>
<p>I do not believe that most people notice these things, for these are conclusions drawn from long months of observation, from never losing sight of you across the room. So I suppose then that I must tell you, if the conclusion remains out of reach from where you stand, visible only to the mind’s eye of a keen observer.</p>
<p>Some things do change, Ferdinand. My own perception was flawed where you were concerned, and you need not seek constant reassurance from me any longer. You have earned it, ten times over, and continue to entrance us all with your indomitable spirit and ardent enthusiasm.</p>
<p>Should my opinion of you hold any weight, let it be another piece of evidence for the mounting pile that one day surely must grow taller than the sum of all your insecurities.</p>
<p>For someone as fond as you are of words and outspoken declarations, this I hope will put an end to your recent flashes of doubt that lead to moping around in the stables, away from the company of people in which you long to scintillate. As if when compared to the Professor, you can never hope to compete. Had we not progressed past this already with Edelgard? There is no competition.</p>
<p>You are enough, Ferdinand. The achievements of others, what their presence brings to the lives they touch, remains entirely detached from your worth. And as the thought of telling you this in person turns my own stomach for how unnecessary an exercise it is, I vow to remind you nonetheless. Face to face, a verbal agreement: that Hubert von Vestra is far from the only one to indeed value and admire various qualities possessed by a certain Ferdinand von Aegir.</p>
<p>See, how logic can prevail against an otherwise uncooperative emotional inclination?</p>
<p>Until then, perhaps over tea.</p>
<p>Yours, for the amount of attention you elicit from me is apparently far greater than you are capable of conceiving,<br/>
A resigned, newly hopeful, inadvertent optimist by your hand,<br/>
Huber von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content: SFW, post-ts, pre-confession, Hubert watches over a feverish Ferdinand and considers why he grew out his hair.</p>
<p>This prompt struck a chord with me but I don't know if it will make sense to anyone else. As always, thanks to all of you who trust this mix of content and read regardless. Thank you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the man who lies but a few feet away from me, his breathing too shallow and complexion too pallid,</p>
<p>Never could I have imagined writing one of these ridiculous letters while in your vicinity. And yet here I find myself—your bedside vigil armed only with paper and ink, under a pretense of overnight work that for once no one tried to dissuade me from.</p>
<p>Linhardt says we must believe you will be fine. Yet what is faith, to the band of rebels who would see the goddess torn from her pedestal? Not much use, I’m afraid.</p>
<p>About as useful as your absurdly long locks, which since you passed out have gotten drenched in sweat. That no one thought to dress you properly for bedrest is unacceptable, and I may have taken it upon myself to braid your hair the best I could without rousing you, and laid it out of your way across your pillow. Still, those stubborn strands drape over your neck, cling to it now from how damp and sorry they’ve gotten overnight. </p>
<p>What a nuisance, for someone who cannot groom himself properly, to let your hair grow out like this. As much as I would rather it not cause you discomfort, for fear of the whining we’ll all have to endure when you recover, I do wish you could see yourself now. Then maybe you would decide to cut your hair once and for all, instead of forgetting or dallying over it.</p>
<p>How can you forget to care for the very hair on your head, when it routinely gets in your way, or becomes a topic of conversation as much as it has over the past year? I’d struggle to name a single individual who hasn’t seen you in the time it took for it to grow out, and not commented on it in some way. </p>
<p>And sadly I know you well enough by now to know you’re incapable of being anything but earnest, so I can’t for the life of me vilify the incongruous behaviour as a mere cry for attention.</p>
<p>Of all the things that don’t make sense to me about you, your hair is one of the most aggravating. That you would be so careless, while also failing to realize that there is a certain aesthetic to it, much like your beloved eyebrows. Yet those, of course, you do notice. I cannot help but wonder which simpleton at some point in your life commented on the appearance of your eyebrows and associated their plucking with status and nobility for them to concern you so—</p>
<p>Now that I write it out, I dearly hope it wasn’t something said by my younger self to test the bounds of your irrational, approval seeking behaviour.</p>
<p>In any case, this train of thought does no good to help solve the conundrum that is your hair.</p>
<p>I wonder, have you ever truly paid attention to it like I do now, shades of orange bleeding into sweat-soaked red, dancing to the flame of candlelight? It’s a sight far from mundane, let me tell you. Not unlikely to be found in one of those books you used to be so fond of, the tales of princesses and knights, whose illustrated features were too fantastical for someone like me to ever take seriously or consider a model of attraction. Perhaps then, you wouldn’t feel the need to make an excuse for its length, or you could share your reasoning with pride.</p>
<p>For here you are, fever turning your skin to the appearance of cool marble while it burns, the hair framing your neck and throat a golden noose of your own making.</p>
<p>Beauty isn’t a concept that tends to cross my mind, not in the superficial sense. To me, what others read as beauty often reads as envy, or a desire to possess and control that is all too close to my own heart. And if I find you beautiful as you lay now, in a helpless limbo of disease that even our most learned healers cannot identify, then what does that make me?</p>
<p>A monster, who desires only what he can take without resistance? Who finds beauty only in life’s certain end?</p>
<p>Yes, I would assume. It would not be the first time anyone has drawn that conclusion at my expense.</p>
<p>But much like how you forget to cut your hair, there’s an unwelcome truth about myself I cannot deny, when driven to write to no one, whilst the person I so often claim to avoid by this process is undeniably, verily, unfortunately right here.</p>
<p>The truth is that I sometimes forget it is possible to desire with genuine passion, to love in a way that is selfish and filled with envy. Envious of the one who would know the colours of your hair in all its seasons, know the heat of your skin and how it is attuned to your honest heartbeat, not one gripped by sickness. And if the only moment dire enough for me to confront this fact is one that masquerades as a potential last, what does that mean?</p>
<p>Do you care so little for yourself Ferdinand, that you would only remember to cut your hair when under duress, when reminded by another that it may be required of you? Would you only think to care when another’s opinion affects your own perception of yourself, and wounds you deeply enough to spur you to action?</p>
<p>What would you do, if I told you I find your hair beautiful?</p>
<p>Would you cut it, or keep it long?</p>
<p>Yours, waiting with bated breath for the answer to a question that does not bear to be asked,<br/>
A faithless, selfless, devout stoic,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Chapter 23</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content: SFW, post-TS, pre-confession, Ferdinand is reckless in battle in an attempt to one-up Edelgard, Hubert is infuriated, and perhaps comes to a conclusion as to what Ferdinand means to him.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the reckless fool who would gamble a worthy life for the promise of selfish glory,</p>
<p>What on earth were you thinking?! Is the acute danger of war not sharp enough to pierce through that dull, uninspired insecurity of yours?!</p>
<p>No, no of course not. Your ego must always shine center stage, no matter the risk to your battalion, to your comrades, to your allies, and emperor, and your own health.</p>
<p>Nobody cares. Discard that pathetic notion of yours that recognition will only come at the cost of a risk too great, all in the hope that one day you will be remembered as “the man who bested Emperor Edelgard at whatever inane skill he found himself inferior in that day”.</p>
<p>It is not a matter of a cavalier being faster than a heavy armored foot soldier, it is not a matter of your individual capability and prowess. We are an army, we move as one together to where need and reason dictate.</p>
<p>Or are you nothing more than a fool who considers a gravestone a trophy of well-found glory? Would you spit on the future we are fighting for to have your name lost in history as one of the thousands of lives paid as toll for the struggle to see it come into being?</p>
<p>Another reckless casualty of hubris, of impulsive ego-driven action over considered thought?</p>
<p>I know thought on certain topics has never been your strong suit, but please for once in your goddess forsaken life, humor me:</p>
<p>When you sprung forth, claiming to be swifter than Edelgard, and the axe that would have missed her by an inch sent you flying to the ground, did you also consider the scenario where that axe swiped clean through your neck, rather than the blunt end of it hitting you square in the chest as it did?</p>
<p>No, you did not, for in the heat of battle we rarely have more than a split second to think.</p>
<p>Then why is your precious second, the only gift of survival we have, expended on that old wound, the need to prove yourself a woman’s better who not once has insinuated that you are in any way beneath her?</p>
<p>Is this the hill you would choose to die on, Ferdinand? Stupid where you think yourself brave, dead when there is so much of your life left to live?</p>
<p>Think man, would you!?</p>
<p>Do you not understand that I would rather have Ferdinand von Aegir alive for who he is, than dead for the man he foolishly thought others wanted him to become?</p>
<p>You are more than enough, you ridiculous, garish, brazen, well-intentioned sod!</p>
<p>What will it take for you to understand!?</p>
<p>If only you could for one day look at your life through my eyes, feel the years of exasperation I have endured at your hand, as witness to the never ending circus of your insecurity.</p>
<p>Is it not enough that you have always kept fighting for what you believe in? That you have grown tall beyond your years, not in height but in achievement, heralding ideals other than those you were blindly raised with, a testament to your humility and capacity for growth? Is it not enough to hear comrades now call your name in acclaim, when a younger version of you would have done anything to ensure those he encountered remembered it?</p>
<p>Please Ferdinand, I beg of you. Do not let yourself become a memory.</p>
<p>Not before—saints.</p>
<p>Not before the feel of your hair has graced my fingertips, to remember the years of burden during which it grew down to your waist. Not before your smile was just once directed at me, so that I could know the warmth of the sun hidden in its grace.</p>
<p>Ferdinand, I could not take it.</p>
<p>So please, please be the braver of us both. Let me be your lance of reason, so that you could one day, perhaps…</p>
<p>Be the spell of honest bravery that carries words of love from my lips.</p>
<p>Yours, though you do not know it, though survival must first paint a future that allows it,<br/>
A more terrified that you know, more hurt than you think, perhaps also a little in love,<br/>
Hubert von Vestra</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A parting note on these letters: I started them as a fun way to write a bit of Hubert and share my take on his voice with friends, and I ended up pouring a lot into them by way of prompts. I know there's no consciously crafted narrative in these as such, but if you squint you'll see the story of two fictional men dear to many of us. Taking prompts from other people was my way of giving back a little, and showing sides of Hubert I may not have thought of on my own. So to everyone who has contributed to these: thank you. To everyone who has read and commented: thank you. To Nuanta, who prompted this last letter: your prompt felt so fitting for these two, it felt right to end on it in posting order, even though I wrote this as one of the first. It's been my personal favourite the whole way through. Thank you.</p>
<p>Though this concept was designed for me to just be able to indulge in a quick shot of Hubert whenever I please ad infinitum, I think I've said everything I have to say in them now. Hence this letter as a parting chapter.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come find me on Twitter @chryseliss</p></blockquote></div></div>
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